Tim Duncan made his decision early on. The vacant expression, wide-eyed stares, sleep-inducing answers, the history full of swimming and role-playing games, even the Merlin tattoo. All part of a fiction, a charade, an epic trolling of everyone who ever watched him play. He fooled us all.

Only a genius could’ve pulled this off, and Duncan was—is—so much more than that. When you invent an entire persona, there are no days off. You need to support the back story, tales told so often they turn into truths, ones that will stand up to the digging of the most dogged reporters. You build the foundation so deep, even you don’t remember where the real you begins.

But even a genius forgets. And while his earthbound, fundamental, emotionless ways will one day put him in the Hall of Fame (perhaps with another ring), some days he just wants to fly. And he may even flash a little smile.

When Lauren Cheney takes to the pitch, the US women’s national soccer team member lines up at midfield or forward—positions where she’s best known for an offensive prowess that enabled her to break UCLA’s all-time scoring record. When she finds herself on the basketball court, though, the 5-10 Cheney reverts back to her defensive point guard ways that were honed as an All-County high school player in Indianapolis. Not too long ago, while training for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Cheney took some time to speak with SLAM about her favorite sports and the PG she considers No.1 in the NBA, her boyfriend Jrue Holiday.

SLAM: In high school, you lettered in both basketball and soccer?

Lauren Cheney: I did. I played varsity basketball my freshman through junior year, and then I quit playing basketball to pursue the national team in soccer. I had made the Women’s National Team my senior year of high school, so I chose to continue with that.

SLAM: Was it difficult splitting your time and playing both sports at a high level?

LC: It’s funny. In high school, when I was going to have to leave basketball practice early to go to soccer practice, my coach would make me run. But soccer running compared to basketball running is so different, so it was almost not like a punishment, because the running was so easy for me. I remember having to do that all through high school. I just loved both sports so much that it didn’t really matter. I had done it my whole life, and I just continued to do it.

SLAM: How did you get into hoops?

LC: [Laughs] I’m from Indiana.

SLAM: So that means you have a good jumper?

LC: I would say I had to develop my jumper. My forte is definitely defense.

SLAM: When you gave up basketball to pursue the national team and the soccer team at UCLA, did you miss it at all?

LC: Yeah! I played all the time at UCLA. I had friends on the girls’ team there, so I played a lot with them. I also played intramurals, and I’d find football players or some stragglers in the Wooden Center and play pickup.

SLAM: So your game is still nice, then?

LC: [Laughs] I haven’t played in a while, but I can hang. I think I can hang.

SLAM: You played in the World Cup this past summer, so you’re used to playing in front of large crowds. When you go and watch Jrue and the Sixers play, or when you go to any NBA game, do you sort of feel like you know what it’s like being the one down on the court?

LC: Yeah, I feel like I know how they’re feeling, and I like being a spectator. I love watching Jrue play. I know the excitement. I know what it takes to get ready to play in a game like that. But I also just enjoy seeing Jrue smile, or just seeing the smiles on their faces. I like to see people at that top level still just enjoy the game.

SLAM: What does it feel like when you see someone wearing your US soccer kit or Jrue’s Sixers jersey?

LC: It’s really cool. I find myself looking around, and I see more and more Jrue Holiday t-shirts in front of me. I think it’s a good thing, because I know how great of a guy he is. It makes me proud of him; it makes me happy that they recognize not only his game, but I’m sure they follow him because of the person he is, too.

I am incredibly honored and excited for the opportunity to coach Team USA at this summer’s Olympic Games. Even though the US has won four straight Gold medals at the Games, I haven’t won anything. My coaches and I are preparing as if we’re one of the teams that has a chance to win it all, not as if no one can beat us. This is the biggest task I’ve ever undertaken—I’m representing the United States, not the University of Connecticut, and there’s a big difference.

Despite the United States’ incredible track record, I’ll feel the stress once I get to London. But once the Games begin, I’ll do what I always do at UConn: Trust that the players are prepared and ready to go. I might get a few more chances to win another National Championship, but this may be my only chance to win a Gold medal.

The Selection Committee has done a tremendous job picking this year’s team, and there’s definitely a sense of familiarity considering that I have already coached 10 of the 12 players at some point over the past decade. The familiarity is important because the girls will be immersed in the WNBA season leading up to the Games. The fact that I know all these kids and have been around them and coached most of them makes things easier, but it’s still a difficult situation being that we will have little time to prepare.

But believe me, no one is feeling sorry for us. Teams aren’t going to roll over because on paper we have the best players and are the deepest team. We expect to win, but we know that we have to prepare and play at the highest level to achieve our goal. Every good team has a certain aura around them and walks around with an air of confidence. I want this team to eventually have that same aura. It’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and I won’t allow them to carry themselves with a sense of entitlement and believing that every other team is playing for second place. That will never happen as long as I am the coach.

When my former players—especially Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi—are on the floor, it’s like having an extension of myself out there. During their four years under me at UConn, they were part of countless meetings, shootarounds, practices and timeouts, so I trust them implicitly. Having them on the floor is like being the coach at the Pro Bowl and having your quarterback in the huddle. You have a communication level and a comfort that what you say is going to be repeated in the huddle exactly the way you want it to be repeated. There’s not going to be any disconnect there, and that’s huge when you only have a little bit of time to get ready.

There is going to be excellent competition in London this summer, and I know teams like Russia and Australia are expecting to be playing in the Gold medal game. But given the recent history and who we are, anything less than a Gold is going to be very disappointing.

NBA stars may get our bills paid, in terms of cover sales, advertisements, etc, but SLAM can never be accused of ignoring our favorite sport’s roots as an outdoor game played with, as filmmaker and narrator Bobbito Garcia says in his new film (made along with Kevin Couliau), “No governing body, no schedules, no coaches or referees present. Only unwritten rules that change from playground to playground.”

The film, Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, is a fun and informative 80-minute romp through the plentiful playgrounds of Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.

The film was created by Garcia, an author/ballplayer/DJ of impeccable credentials when it comes to playground hoops, and Couliau, a Frenchman who’s got serious game as well, not to mention years of experience behind the camera (still and video).

While the film does not have a commercial release date yet, it is being shown all summer long at various community events and film festivals around the city and the globe (visit facebook.com/doinitinthepark/info for a screening schedule; you may remember our coverage of the world premiere). And what makes a movie about pick-up basketball’s roots in NYC such a must-see for hoop heads everywhere?

“With more than 700 playgrounds, New York is unquestionably the epicenter of basketball cutlure and is still influencing players from all around the world,” says Couliau. “I’m French and I’m really passionate about New York basketball. Bobbito and I have traveled to many events and witnessed the impact of New York streetball and we know that whether you are in Japan, South Dakota or Eastern Europe, you will learn something from this movie and have a basketball jones when it ends.”

Topics covered in the beautifully shot and great-sounding movie (besides some great hip-hop tracks, the film’s original score was done by Grammy-winning pianist Eddie Palmieri) include histories of legendary spots like Rucker Park, explanations of the roots of games such as 21, the importance of nicknames and fashion on the playground and pick-up’s role in prison. There are also interviews with some of the greatest players New York has produced, whether they made the NBA or will be forever revered for what they did in the parks.

For more background and visuals on the film, check out the great photos (at the bottom of this post) and their captions, which are exact quotes from Bobbito himself, and SLAM’s extended interview (which did not appear with the rest of the story in SLAM 160) with Couliau below.

SLAM: What is your basketball-playing history?

Kevin Couliau: I started basketball early, at the age of six years old. The game is organized differently in France, you learn basketball in clubs that are independent from the school system. So I was lucky to have a great teacher and a good structure five minutes away from my house in Nantes, on the West coast of France. I would spend all my evenings in the gym, training with my team or shooting around during the women training. As a kid, I was averaging 25+ points per game, always keeping an eye on the stats sheet after the games. At age 16, I was among the top kids of my generation (1982, like Tony Parker) in my hometown. I was picked to study and play in one of our rare specialized sports school but never went there because I was experiencing a parallel life through the world of skateboarding. It had opened my eyes dramatically, to the point where my perception of basketball changed. I never stopped, but reaching a pro-level wasn’t the priority anymore. I spent a lot of time on the playground, working on my handle, bringing my creative skills to the organized game despite some coaches trying to change my game. I’m currently playing amateur, at a good level in France, we are trying to reach “Nationale 3” level which is four steps below PRO A.

SLAM: What is your film history? What else have you done and worked on?

KC: I started film photography in 2004 with a report on my local playground for a French basketball magazine. The next summer, I flew to New York, documented my first trip and encounter with Bobbito on Super 8 film and had my brother edit this short clip called “Harlem Shuffle.” I was mostly a basketball photographer, following the dunking squad “Slam Nation” all over Europe and shooting New York’s streetball for some publications. But, in 2009, I invested in a Canon 5D Mark II and shot a short clip: “Heart & Soul Of New York City” for rap artist Red Café and a German basketball brand. The piece received a tremendous feedback within the basketball and urban communities. It has motivated me to continue. Later on, I got the chance to work as a camera operator on several editions of Jordan Brand’s Quai 54 in Paris, as a director of photography with The New Explorers of Canal+, a documentary series broadcasted on Canal+ TV channel. And more recently on a short clip for The New York Knicks’ “Battle of The Borough” night.

SLAM: How much time did you spend filming Doin’ it in the Park?

KC: We spent 75 days on our bicycles, exploring the city with the video equipment in the backpacks. Our journey started in 2010. I spent the whole summer at Bobbito’s apartment, sleeping on the couch, eating watermelon chunks, riding the bike, playing ball, filming, unloading the footage into the hard drives every night. It was so special because there was no typical day, no routine. During weekdays we would take our bikes and ride in random directions; on the weekend we tried to localize the best runs and head to those famous or secret courts. Some days we would film from 10 a.m. to midnight, and other times we would only spend two hours filming. In 2011, the process was different because we had already started editing the film, so once we were outside, we knew what was missing.

SLAM: How much time did you spend playing pick-up while you were filming?

KC: Our playing time varied depending on the situations we were in. Once we hit a playground our priority was to film the pick-up games, kids or adults. Whoever was on the court we would film and then play with them, or Bobbito would play and I would film. If the park was empty we would put the camera on a tripod and play one-on-one, Horse, 5-2, Taps… so I discovered some shooting games I didn’t know about. The most difficult thing was to alternate pick-up games and filming. Being all sweaty and manipulating the camera afterwards was kind of tricky.

SLAM: How many hours of footage did you compile in total?

KC: Approximately 80 hours of footage on two consecutive summers. And you can add 10 hours of archive material that we have collected from various sources. Bobbito and I have been documenting New York streetball for many years, so we also had some great photos, old VHS or DVD’s with some incredible imagery.

SLAM: Where in France did you grow up?

KC: I grew up in Nantes, on the west coast of France, which is one the biggest areas over there when it comes to basketball.

SLAM: Is there a pick-up basketball culture there?

KC: Yes, we are lucky to have a great playground in a big park called “Parc de Procé.” Six half-courts with different rims heights so you can practice your dunks on lower hoops. Getting there as a kid was tough because the guys would steal your ball, and you needed to earn a rep playing with the few dudes dominating the playground. We mainly played 3-on-3 games, with a lot of picks and passes, Euro-style. And back in the days we were lucky to have chain link nets, so you really felt that gritty vibe. Because we were all highly influenced by New York and US basketball culture, our pick-up culture was exactly the same than a kid from Minnesota would have. We didn’t know anything about games like Taps, 5-2, 21…games that are typically from NYC. So if we were three on a playground, we would leave because playing 21 wasn’t something we had heard of or experienced.

SLAM: How is pick-up basketball there different then in NYC?

KC: In New York City, the game is not only considered a sport, but also as a recreational activity. That’s the big difference. I’ve seen kids playing one-on-one full court in Brooklyn, 70 years old men running with teenagers…you can play with people from all ages and backgrounds and that’s pretty unique. On the individual aspect, New Yorkers are better, more athletic and great ball-handlers, but sharing the ball and moving around is not part of their habits.

The number of playgrounds in New York is just outrageous compared to other cities in the states and the rest of the world. Just imagine if NYC had only one court, West 4th, for example, this is nearly how I grew up. All the players were gathering on the same playground, so the vibe was super friendly, but competitive at the same time. We still have to learn how to integrate playgrounds in our urban landscapes even though France has always been a big streetball place. In the early 90’s guys like Moustapha Sonko were dominating the Parisian playgrounds, but the NBA wasn’t ready yet.

SLAM: Who was your favorite person to interview?

KC: Pee Wee Kirkland, definitely. I had read a few books and articles mentioning the legendary stickman, but I wasn’t really familiar with the character. I never met him personally. So when I saw him at Milbank Center with his 70’s haircut and attitude, I felt like Marty McFly in Back to The Future. But once he started answering, I realized how deep New York basketball culture is and the impact that his generation of players had on our modern basketball. I also really enjoyed filming Kenny Smith and Kenny Anderson. I was a big fan and was really surprised to see how enthusiastic they were while talking about their childhood in Lefrak City.

SLAM: What was your favorite part of filming this movie?

KC: Besides the satisfaction of playing ball everyday, we had our funniest moments with kids. Whatever the neighborhood, our most animated characters were the youth of New York City. Each time we would set-up the tripod and play, those little kids would interact with the camera, comment on the games or get behind it to start filming. In Ron Artest’s Queensbridge, for example, as soon as we arrived, a 10-year-old kid came at us and said, “ I’m sure me and my friend can beat you 2-on-2.” He had the typical socks and slip-ons style we saw the whole summer. We accepted the challenge, won three games in a row until he called his big brother, but that wasn’t a problem for us. The camera was still rolling, some kids were saying “ Bang-Bang” on each of our made shots and we ended up winning everything. Another good memory was in Lefrak City. I didn’t know what to expect—15 kids were playing 21 in slip-ons, which was amazing, but when I saw the Kenny Smith’s and Kenny Anderson’s logos on the playgrounds, I instantly felt like I was in a legendary place. Our poster photo was taken that day.

Long before a suited, seated and silvered Tom Heinsohn became a TV commentator, before he became an awarder of Tommy Points and source of Celtic-colored commentary, a lean, limber, 6-7 Tom Heinsohn was an All-League forward for Boston who was best known for getting Tommy points on low-arcing shots, winning Championships and spreading Celtic Pride throughout New England.

Most current NBA fans only know the former and have little insight into the latter. For his part, though, Heinsohn, who aside from winning eight Championships with the Celtics between 1956-65 and coached them to two more between ’69-78, has come to terms with his source of popularity.

“It’s really amazing,” begins the 77-year-old Heinsohn, who entered the League with Hall of Famers Bill Russell and KC Jones in 1956 after graduating from Holy Cross and immediately won a Championship. “[Play-by-play man] Mike Gorman once said, ‘There’s a generation of people that knew Tommy as a player, another generation that knew him as a coach and the current generation thinks he’s Shrek.”

While it’s OK for Heinsohn—who was once known as “Ack-Ack,” akin to a machine gun sound, for his propensity to shoot—to joke about his legacy, it’s not OK to remain unaware of the Hall of Famer’s career.

With that in mind, we recently connected with the nine-year Celtic player (he averaged 18.6 ppg and 8.8 rpg, and as the Player’s Union President, was the impetus behind major reforms), nine-year Celtic coach (he went 427-263, and as the Coach’s Union President was the impetus for major reforms) and 30-plus year commentator to discuss how much he’s gotten from the game, and how much the game’s gotten from him.

SLAM: How did you get started in basketball?

Tommy Heinsohn: I’m originally from North Jersey, and basketball was very big there. Back when I first got out of high school, the seventh and eighth men on high school teams were going to college on basketball scholarships. We would play three-on-three in the schoolyard where the backboard was just hanging off the wall.

SLAM: What was it like for you when you first played in the NBA with the Celtics?

TH: The first game I played was a pre-season game up in Houlton, ME, which at the time was a prosperous county in Maine because of the potato industry. They had a terrific high school gym that they built there. We would go up, it was like a four-and-a-half hour trip in those days to get to the tip of Maine, I walked out and there was Indians walking around the street. That was quite different than what I was used to.

SLAM: Along with fellow rookies Bill Russell and KC Jones, you joined a team that already had Bob Cousy, and you went on to win eight NBA titles as a player. Do you feel like you landed in the perfect place at the perfect time?

TH: Red [Auerbach] was there first, then Cousy came along, then Red put the rest of the team together. They had a pretty productive team before we came with Cousy, [Bill] Sharman and Ed Macauley. They could score, but they weren’t a good defensive or rebounding team. They needed what Russell and I provided—rebounding and defense. Add in KC Jones and it might’ve been the best Draft any team ever had. The first three guys drafted ended up in the Hall of Fame; I don’t think any team has ever matched that.

Red was smart enough to develop a loyalty and he made us all believe in, what I call, our Cosa Nostra. It was our thing, everybody took pride in what we did, and we were all responsible. It really was a team effort, in every sense of the word. From the beginning of training camp, they would introduce something and you were asked to critique it, and it might be changed because of your thoughts. At key points in the game, for instance the last two minutes of the game, I’m sure people would be surprised at how the huddles went. Instead of the coach telling a guy what to do, Red would say, “Has anybody got anything?” You were expected to tell him, in front of your teammates, what you thought would work.

SLAM: Even though you won a Championship as a rookie, were you able to grasp how special winning one was?

TH: Oh, sure. Sharman and Cousy had been there six years before Russell and I showed up. When we got to the final game, they were so anxious just to win that they couldn’t get out of their own way. Russell and I both had great games, though. Russell had won two NCAA titles in college and I had won an NIT, which at one point was the key tournament, so we were used to winning. And we had guys like Frank Ramsey, who played at Kentucky. Red made sure that most of the players that he drafted had some kind of championship background.

SLAM: Tough to ask, but does any one memory stick out to you from your playing days?

TH: My biggest kick I got out of playing was not just the first Championship we won but tipping in the game-winner to knock Philadelphia out of the Playoffs at the buzzer. Eleven thousand Philadelphia fans in the Convention Hall all shut up at once. Nobody’s ever done that [laughs].

SLAM: The fan base was pretty small when you started, so do you take a sense of pride in people talking about Celtic Pride and all that?

TH: Yeah. We used to travel 200 miles a day from one town to another in late September, early October. I’ve seen every little town in New England because of that. Once we started winning Championships, we saw baskets going up in driveways in the suburbs outside of Boston. Cousy and I lived in Worcester during our playing days, and we’d see basketball courts going up during our travels, so we knew we were starting to connect.

SLAM: And then, at age 30, you had to retire pretty much in the prime of your career.

TH: Well, I got hurt. I ripped up the plantar fascia muscle on my foot and I had a hematoma in there. In those days, there wasn’t much you could do about it. It really calcified—it was like a marble at the bottom of my foot—and they chipped away at it with an ultrasound. That was the only thing they could do in those days, and by doing it they kind of ruined the muscle that connects your toe to your heel and gives you the ability to lift when you jump. I had trouble walking for the next two years, as a matter of fact.

SLAM: So what did you do in those few years between when you retired and when you started coaching?

TH: Well, I had always been in the life insurance business. I had another career going, which a lot of people did in those days, because they had to—you weren’t gonna satisfy the rest of your life’s financial needs just by playing basketball like they can now. You had to have another career, and that was my career. The first year after I was out, Red came to me and asked me if I wanted to broadcast the games. I had a radio show when I was a player, so he knew I had some understanding. So I was on the scene all those years between playing and coaching, and actually, the last year I broadcast, Red was my color guy [laughs]. We did games together, and then he offered me the coaching job. So I took the coaching job and had great fun doing that.

SLAM: Right. And then when you stopped coaching, you slid right back into the booth?

TH: What happened is that I went back into the insurance business, and I was doing a lot of PR work for Miller beer. Then people came back and asked me to broadcast again. I did games on CBS for the League, and then the Celtics ended up with a cable contract and I started doing the away games. Thirty-two years later, I’m still broadcasting games.

SLAM: Do you have any special memories from your broadcasting days, be it plays or games or sequences?

TH: You don’t get to do the Finals [with cable], but I did do the Finals with CBS. In the Bird era, it really involved mostly the Celtics and somebody else [laughs]. When the Celtics ended up playing the Lakers, everybody thought I was a homer, and Boston thought I was a traitor. The way I would broadcast the games nationally is I would approach it like I was a coach. I would zero in on the weaknesses of the team and think about how those weaknesses might be exploited. Of course, that’s the first time people in L.A. found out their team had weaknesses [laughs]. They immediately thought I was the enemy. And when I started talking about some of the weaknesses of the Celtics, they thought I was a traitor giving away secrets [laughs]. I remember one game I broadcast with a purple and green tie, split right down the middle, just to prove that I was non-partial.

SLAM: Even people who don’t watch many Celtics games know about how you give out Tommy Points. Do you remember how that originated?

TH: There was a philosophy that Red Auerbach had that was generated by the PR aspect of the sixth man. You manage people by love, not just money, and the sixth man was really about extending love. The first five guys get all the accolades because they walk out and the spotlight is on them when they announce the starters. [Meanwhile], there’s always one or two guys sitting on the bench saying, “Geez, I’m better than that guy out there.” So Red had a philosophy: He’d let the numbers speak for the first five guys, then he’d talk about the contribution of the eighth guy, the ninth guy.

When we needed something special for the broadcast, I came up with the Tommy Point. Actually, they came up with the name but I came up with the idea of rewarding guys who play with extra verve, who are willing to gamble life and limb for victory. It was all based on Red’s philosophy. The funny part about the Tommy Point is, my wife, who was seriously ill for a long period of time, was a redhead and I would mention her on the broadcast by saying “the redhead from Needham would really have liked that.” People would start to understand, and then I gave Tommy Points to any redhead in the stands and they would show the people on camera and they came with signs [laughs]. One girl had one that said, “You’ve got to give me a Tommy Point. I need one to get a date for the prom.” So I said, “That girl gets a Tommy Point!” Three weeks later, she comes to a game and holds up a sign, “Thanks Tommy! I got my date for the prom.” The next season she came down and introduced me to the guy who took her to the prom [laughs].

SLAM: From player to coach to TV commentator—in the past 50 years you’ve truly seen the NBA grow from small-time to international phenomenon.

TH: I can tell if someone played in the old days by if they know about the Green Parrot Inn. When you played in Rochester and the next night you were supposed to play in Fort Wayne, IN, there was no way to get there in time. There was no plane [laughs]. There was no train that stopped in Fort Wayne and emanated in Rochester. What you had to do was take a train and get off in a cornfield about 15 miles from Fort Wayne. Walk, in the middle of the winter, from the cornfield to the Green Parrot Inn—which was in the center of this little town—and stand there with your bag and thumb rides from high school kids who you’d pay a few bucks to take you to Fort Wayne. Anyone who tells that story, you know they played in those early days [laughs].

Dreams—however outlandish they may seem at first—can come true! I was a 13-year-old in India when I picked up my first SLAM magazine, and as an aspiring writer and a basketball fan, it became my obsession to one day see my name in print in SLAM. Fourteen years and 100 issues of SLAM later, basketball in my own country develops as I develop professionally, and the perfect culmination of my dream comes true. India is a land of a million stories; here is just one of them.—KM

by Karan Madhok

The sounds are the same. The same squeak of sneakers rubbing against the wooden floor. The same sweekk of a leather ball swishing through the net. The same cacophony created by a dozen different balls bouncing against the floor in irregular beats.

But then the voices start and you realize that something is different. Basketball words are being used, but they are expressed in a jumbled mix of different languages: English, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi, too.

This isn’t a pick-up run on the East Coast or a college game in mid-America or an NBA game on the West Coast. This is a court thousands of miles of land and ocean away from those basketball havens. This is India’s Senior Men’s National Basketball squad—a select group of the best basketball players chosen from a population of 1.2 billion people—hard at practice. In the midst of these players stands their coach, an American named Kenny Natt, who has a rich history in the NBA.

Natt, who was last heard from in North America as interim head coach of the Sacramento Kings in ’08-09, cuts through the cultural and language barriers between himself and the Indian players with the one thing everyone assembled at practice can understand: basketball.

One pass, one shot and one new-to-basketball player at a time, India finds itself on the cusp of a roundball revolution, and Natt, who was appointed the national team’s head coach in May, 2011, finds himself in the middle of it all. “It has been an adjustment working here, of course,” Natt says. “But I’ve gained a lot of experience about the culture of the people here, and specifically of the basketball players.”

India is a fairly complicated country, so an adjustment period is more than expected. After all, it’s a country with some of the world’s richest people and some of the world’s largest slums. It’s a country where more people have access to telephones than to restrooms. It’s a country of over a billion people, over a million Gods and over 400 languages and dialects. It is a country with a few common threads that loosely bind all of that diversity together. Namely: the dominant Hindi film industry Bollywood, the sport of cricket and the ubiquitous cup of chai (milk tea).

It is in this complex, brilliant, chaotic and beautiful world where Natt is hoping to help make one of the world’s biggest sports a little bigger.

This is definitely new territory for the 53-year-old Natt, though he has devoted a large percentage of his life to professional basketball. As a player, he was the 30th overall pick of the 1980 NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers and spent nine years bouncing between the NBA (where he played for the Pacers, Utah Jazz and Kansas City Kings), the CBA and the World Basketball League.

After his playing days came to an end, Natt made his return to the NBA as an assistant coach on Jerry Sloan’s staff in Utah in the mid-’90s and got to be a part of the Stockton-Malone teams that reached the NBA Finals in ’97 and ’98. After that, Natt worked as an assistant and oversaw the development of a young LeBron James in Cleveland. His most recent NBA gig was with the Kings, where he began as an assistant, was promoted to interim head coach after the firing of Reggie Theus in December ’08 and served in that role until the following April.

That’s when, with his NBA story on pause, Natt decided to break from the mold. Instead of returning to some other head coach’s NBA bench, when he was offered the job of head coach for India’s National Team—a squad representing the world’s second-most-populous country but that usually finds itself ranked somewhere around 50th place in the FIBA World rankings—he jumped at the opportunity.

India has rarely performed well in Asian basketball championships, regularly outclassed by the likes of China, Korea, Japan, Lebanon and Iran. For Natt, a coach habituated with playing against the Lakers, Spurs, Mavericks and Bulls, he’s had to adjust to dealing with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Despite the different-sounding opponents and, of course, the wide talent gap, Natt hasn’t really altered his playbook. “I still run the same plays that we used to for John Stockton or LeBron James,” he says. “But there is now a different approach to my coaching to integrate the understanding of Indian players more.”

For Natt, though, it’s about much more than Xs and Os. He might have entered India a year ago with the stated task of being no more than a teacher on court, but his reach now stretches across a much larger canvas of the Basketball Federation of India. “My goal is to help advance the game from the ground up here,” Natt says. “It’s more than just teaching fundamentals of basketball now, I’ve taken an active role in the administrative side of the game here and I’m really enjoying it. I’m doing coaches’ clinics around the country to make the coaches better.”

Making Indian ball better isn’t Natt’s task alone. While he spearheads the Men’s team, the top job for the Women’s squad was handed to Pete Gaudet, who is most famous for serving as an assistant to Coach K at Duke. For the first time, India also hired a Strength & Conditioning Coach—Zak Penwell—to work with the national squads. These are signs of progress on the micro level. There have also been progressive steps taken on a much grander scale.

In 2010, the BFI (Basketball Federation of India) signed a 30-year sponsorship deal with American sports/media management company IMG Worldwide. (Meanwhile, IMG entered India in separate partnership with India’s richest conglomerate of companies, Reliance.) The IMG-Reliance bond, backing basketball in India with international sports expertise and finances, became the first hope of optimism for hoop fans in India for decades. Apart from sealing the deal for the three American coaches, IMG-Reliance started a scholarship program for talented young Indian players to enroll at the IMG Academy in Florida. Most importantly, Natt says, their presence also brings the promise of India’s first-ever professional basketball league in the near future. “Once a pro league comes, it’ll give players the incentive and motivation to make it to the big stage. Young players need to see good players playing hard and want to emulate them. We need to create a vision for the future, and create excitement for the game amongst its new fans. A league will completely change the life of players, coaches and others involved with the game. It will create jobs and help to build better infrastructure. It will ultimately improve the level of talent that makes up India’s national teams.”

Before India has its own league—before the Indian people even really care about basketball—the country has to succeed at basketball, and that is still Natt’s primary assignment. His first adventure with the national team was at the 2011 FIBA Asia Basketball Championship (ABC), held in Wuhan, China. While India disappointed by falling to a 14th-place finish, Natt returned with a greater understanding of the style of play and an optimism for the future.

“Indian players in general have a lot of finesse, although some of them—the players from the state of Punjab—are very strong and physical,” Natt notes. “Several years ago, we in the NBA used to have the notion that players from other countries were too ‘soft.’ But I’ve seen talented, strong players here and it’s very encouraging because the physicality will really help them establish the inside game. In turn, this helps the passive-aggressive perimeter players.”

India’s basketball fortunes—in more ways than one—may lie in the size-22 shoes of 16-year-old giant Satnam Singh Bhamara [see sidebar at right]. A farmer’s son turned student-athlete at the IMG Basketball Academy in Florida, Bhamara is a promising talent who stands 7-2. Indian basketball fans and the NBA both hope that Bhamara—or someone soon after him—can become India’s first star on basketball’s biggest stage.

DeMarcus Cousins is tired—tired physically, tired of the losing, tired of constantly being overlooked as one of the League’s most dominant inside forces for reasons outside his 30+ minutes on the floor every night. He’s worn out from the mental aggravation that comes from the relentless drone from media and fans about his demeanor, fatigued from carrying his team, while at the same time carrying the weight of his unfortunate rep as an immature hothead in serious need of an attitude adjustment—one he’s dealt with since the ’10 Draft.

“Especially with all the negativity always coming my way,” Cousins explains. “It’s always hard to deal with the problem or the issue and go out there. Playing ball and trying to zone out and ignore all the other stuff is hard.”

You wouldn’t know it, since the 6-11 bruiser, lightly listed at 270 pounds, put up numbers that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that from a basketball standpoint, he’s matured quickly.

When he answers his cell phone it’s nearly 1:30 p.m. in Sacramento, the day after a loss in Oklahoma City. In that game, Cousins scored 32 points to pace the Kings, who faded late against one of the West’s best. Tomorrow night, he’ll close out his sophomore campaign with 23 points and 19 rebounds in a win over the short-handed, Playoff-clinched Lakers. Big lines like these became a familiar footnote this year for the Kings, who limped to a 22-44 record amidst talk of the franchise relocating.

Known to fans as Boogie, a moniker bestowed upon him at Kentucky by Wildcats assistant and former NBA point guard Rod Strickland, Cousins averaged 18.1 points, 11 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.2 blocks per game in his second NBA season. He finished top-10 in free-throw attempts, top-5 in rebounding and No. 1 in the League in total offensive rebounds, at more than 4 per game. He improved his percentages from the field (45 percent) and the free-throw line (70 percent). By year’s end, Cousins had 4 more rebounds, 7 more blocked shots, 8 more steals and 17 more points than he had total his rookie season—despite appearing in 17 fewer games due to the lockout.

“He knows how to use his body, he’s athletic, he’s long and his killer instinct sets him apart,” says Knicks forward Josh Harrelson, a teammate of Cousins’ in college. “He can dribble for a big guy, he can shoot the ball, he can post you up. He’s got great footwork for being that big, so he’s definitely a matchup problem for most people.”

To top it all off, Cousins did work at the defensive end, too, leading the League in charges taken. All part of DMC’s plan to become a more well-rounded player by gaining any edge he can. “Even if I’m not putting up big numbers or stats, I know I can dominate some other type of way—maybe just by my presence alone or making my teammates better. I know I can always dominate a game in some type of way.”

DeMarcus’ domination down low allowed the drastically undersized Kings to play an unconventional three-guard lineup for much of the regular season. His numbers are even more impressive when you consider he shouldered an extra forward’s worth of the rebounding load, while Sacramento rolled the dice with its trio of young guards—Tyreke Evans, Marcus Thornton and Isaiah Thomas.

And yet, it was a breakout second season that almost never was. Over the truncated ’11-12 NBA season, perhaps no player endured a roller coaster ride quite like DMC, for whom the basketball media writes a new narrative with every peak and valley. Not even a simple game recap can go by without the Alabama native’s name being preceded by phrases like “talented but volatile.”

Four games into the ’11-12 season, Cousins was sent home by head coach Paul Westphal, who released a statement saying DeMarcus had demanded to be traded, and he had no choice but to dismiss his starting center. Cousins—who denies ever asking to be traded, saying only that “everybody doesn’t know what happens behind closed doors in this League”—missed Sacramento’s New Year’s Day win over New Orleans.

“Those days were rough, especially coming from the Kings,” says Cousins, who remembers isolating himself at home, turning off his phone and sitting in the dark to avoid SportsCenter. “A story got put out like I didn’t want to be there, and that was absolutely not true. I definitely want to be in Sacramento, this is the place where I want to be.”

Less than a week later, though, after he re-joined the Kings on the team’s next road trip, the contentious relationship between player and coach came to a head, as Kings management elected to fire Westphal after a 2-5 start—and stand behind Cousins.

Assistant Keith Smart inked a deal to become the team’s new head man, and almost immediately, made it clear that developing a positive relationship with Cousins was a priority. Smart got to know Cousins, texting him after games and showing up at the 21-year-old’s home to talk, watch television or share a pot of gumbo from Sandra Dee’s.

“He’ll just come over and have dinner. We’re both guys from the South, and we love seafood,” says Cousins of his coach, who earned his trust early on. “[Coach Smart] understands me, I understand him and we’re on the same page. He wants me to be great. He knows my talents, he wants me to show them. He believes in me.”

With Smart at the helm, Cousins not only thrived as a player, but had more fun. The normally stoic, stone-faced Cousins even donned Smart’s sport coat during the final minute of a late-March win over Memphis, clapping his hands and directing traffic as “Coach Boogie.”

For as far as he’s come personally, the chorus of critics remains strong, taking aim at his lack of consistency. Because when he’s on, there aren’t five bigs in the League who can stop him. So what happens on big nights like April 3, when he poured in a career-high 41 points against Phoenix’s overmatched frontline? “I usually come out focused, probably more focused than other nights, which is a problem. I’m still trying to learn how to be consistent on that aspect of the game. Just to focus, and have a goal in mind—go out and dominate.”

More disapproval remains for his perceived lack of composure when discussing said on-court frustrations. One game after his career-best against the Suns, the NBA fined DMC $25K for criticizing the officiating in a loss to the Clippers. His post-game comments included barbs aimed at Blake Griffin, whom he described as “babied” and “an actor.”

Not surprisingly, Cousins issued no apology, offered no retraction. In fact, rather than wanting to explain away the remarks, he stands by them. “I still feel that way,” Cousins says. “[Griffin] is a good player, but I feel like some of the things he gets aren’t really earned and are just given to him. There are other players like myself, who don’t get any type of credit. It’s just, ‘Oh, he’s an immature player with talent.’”

Love him or hate him—and agree or not with his assessment of BG—it’s hard not to respect Cousins’ candor in an era when athletes are expected to favor political correctness over honesty. Boogie knows his off-the-cuff style is abrasive to some, but that won’t stop him from delivering the truth as he sees it. “I’m always somebody that’s going to speak my mind. That usually gets me in trouble, but at the end of the day, I’m going to speak my mind.”

With two years of experience under his belt, Cousins has taken baby steps toward turning his fiery personality into trouble for his opponents on the court, rather than for himself off it.

As Harrelson puts it, “He’s still young, he’s not mature yet and that shows at times. He’s got a long way to go in that aspect of the game. But every game he’s out there, you see him maturing more and more.”

A verbal spat with Kings strength and conditioning coach Daniel Shapiro in October of his rookie year reportedly cost Cousins a $5,000 fine. Shapiro acknowledges there was an incident but insists their “relationship has improved tenfold from last year.” And now, the two work together in the weight room to harness his energy for the better. “His emotion is his strength,” Shapiro says. “We do not want to lose that passion.”

Because it’s that burning desire that makes Boogie both a menace on the offensive boards and a target for technical fouls. Properly channeling his mean streak is Cousins’ next big challenge—which makes his admiration for Spurs veteran Tim Duncan appropriate. “Shit, you’re good,” DMC reportedly told Duncan while matching up with The Big Fundamental in March.

“Just his calmness, he’s never in a rush, he knows he’s in control. That’s something I would like to take from his game,” says Cousins, who, like Duncan in his prime, prefers to catch the ball at the elbow, face up and attack defenders. But Duncan is not his favorite.

No, the player who DeMarcus says he models his game after is an altogether more incongruous choice: Carmelo Anthony. He marvels at Melo’s “quickness for his size” and all-around game, and sees similarities in his, despite quite a difference in frame.

Such is the kind of refreshingly curious interlude that makes DeMarcus Cousins one of the most unique, genuine star players on the planet. On the surface, his contrast of otherworldly talent and bruising body but often-brash attitude and strange post-game musings just doesn’t compute. It’s easiest to label him “misunderstood,” and leave it at that. After all, a tattoo on his calf says just that.

But when it comes to pure basketball, there’s no misunderstanding Boogie’s potential. At All-Star Weekend, Charles Barkley called Cousins a “scary talent” before adding that with proper motivation, he could be “the best big man in the NBA.” DeMarcus says it won’t be long before Chuck’s prediction rings true.

“As of right now, I’d rank myself top three. And that’s behind Dwight and Andrew Bynum. But I feel like I’ll be passing them soon, as well.”

And Big Cous has a simple set of goals for his summer. “Come back even more dominant, in better shape, in a better mind frame, more of a leader.” As for a Playoff run next year? “It’s going to start with me. I’m going to have to step up even more. And my teammates are going to have to follow.”

SLAM: Tell us about your hometown and how you originally got into hoops.

Goran Dragic: I grew up in Ljubljana [Slovenia]. I started playing soccer, then I had a leg injury, then after that all my friends were playing basketball. That’s how I learned it. My wish was to be a soccer player, but then everything turned around and I became a basketball player.

SLAM: So you were mainly into soccer as a kid?

GD: Yes, yes. In Europe, the main sport is soccer, so all the kids from my neighborhood were playing soccer.

SLAM: Was anyone playing basketball?

GD: Yeah, that too, but more soccer. Then maybe in seventh, eighth grade, we started to play basketball—all of us kids in the neighborhood.

SLAM: What was the injury that made you switch?

GD: I broke my leg at a soccer game. Then my mom decided that it’s too rough to play soccer, so then I tried to switch sports. I’m lucky I did that, that I decided to switch to basketball.

SLAM: Were you good right away, or did it take a while to get into it?

GD: When I was playing against my friends, I was good enough to play. Soon as I started playing, I knew it was the sport for me. I probably needed a couple years to know the system and learn basketball.

SLAM: You went pro at 17, which over here is considered early, but over there is pretty standard, right?

GD: Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty standard. I signed my first contract when I was 17 years old. I was playing in a second-division Slovenia league, and then I transferred to a first-division team in Slovenia, and that’s how I started my basketball career.

SLAM: You think that toughened you up a little?

GD: I would say yes. When I was 18 years old, I went for the first time to a foreign country—I signed in Spain. It was really tough for me, [being] the first time without my family. Another country, a different language. But I think I got tougher.

SLAM: Yeah, you had to adapt to a brand new culture.

GD: It was tough, especially with the language. But then a lot of my teammates helped me a lot. Coach, too. Then after two-to-three months I was really happy over there and really grateful they gave me an opportunity.

SLAM: Later, when you were an NBA rookie, you had already gone through the process of getting used to a new environment. Did that help with your NBA transition?

GD: It helped me a little bit, especially because it was not something new for me. I [had done it] in Spain and then I came to the USA, but still—it’s a different style of basketball. The players are stronger. The League is much faster. Of course, I needed some time to adapt to this environment. But a lot of my teammates helped me, especially Grant Hill and Steve Nash. They were great to me.

SLAM: Who was your favorite player when you were growing up?

GD: My favorite player, naturally, was Rasho Nesterovic. He was coming from Slovenia, so he was one of the biggest players in Slovenia. And of course, Michael Jordan, Steve Nash and Grant Hill. I was really happy I had the chance to play with [Nash and Hill] on the same team. I learned a lot from them, especially how you do things on the court and off the court, like eating healthy.

SLAM: Had you been in touch with Nesterovic when you originally went pro and then came to the NBA?

GD: Yeah. We played for the same national team, and then when I moved from Europe to the NBA, we were pretty close. He helped me a lot, especially with how everything is different here. Every time I needed something, I’d call him and ask him about it, and he’d help me.

SLAM: It must’ve been tough to watch the NBA when you were little, with the time difference and all.

GD: Yeah. I was a big fan of the NBA when I was a kid. I was dreaming about some day playing in this League. Once a week I’d wake up at 2, 2:30, 3 a.m. to watch NBA games, and then the next day I’d have school so I’d be really tired and sleepy. But basketball is my love, so I’d have to wake up and see some games.

SLAM: Your parents were OK with that?

GD: No, no. They were mad at me! They knew I loved basketball. If it was a Friday or a Saturday they were fine, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they didn’t let me watch the games.

SLAM: Do you get a chance follow soccer during the NBA season?

GD: When it’s the NBA season, no, but when I was with the Phoenix Suns, we’d play after practice a lot with Steve Nash. When it’s the offseason I play with my friends a little bit—we play soccer, tennis, table-tennis, that kind of stuff.

SLAM: Is Nash the only NBA player you’ve been teammates with that plays soccer?

GD: Yeah, and Grant Hill, he played a little bit. And Shaq—he was the goalie.

It takes until the very end of his story for Ivan Johnson to let out a smile. Ivan’s leaning back in his assigned locker in Madison Square Garden an hour before the Hawks take on the New York Knicks back in late February, clad in a practice uniform and black Nike Hyperfuse kicks, breaking down his prolonged, exhaustive path to the NBA. And no, the tale doesn’t exactly fill his face with joy. It’s been a long ride.

Most NBA fans didn’t have a clue who Ivan was early last season, when he didn’t even have a Wikipedia page to call his own. Then in an early January nationally televised bout against the Miami Heat, he broke out, upstaging opposing forward Chris Bosh on several plays—grabbing tough rebounds, sinking improbable jumpers, beating Bosh to the hole for strong lay-ups. Charles Barkley fawned over his intensity; Reggie Miller yelled “Ivan the Terrible!” at the top of his lungs. Ivan’s name trended on Twitter. He even earned himself a Wikipedia page, albeit one with a single sentence that simply stated his age and occupation.

That void of information was no coincidence. Throughout the past half-dozen years, the big man has stayed mostly beneath the radar, moving through various basketball leagues both in the States and abroad, and when he eventually received his call-up to the big show, he didn’t exactly pour his heart out to the media. In fact, he didn’t say much at all—questions sent Ivan’s way tend not to get answered with more than a word or two. He’s not much of a talker. Which is unfortunate, because the guy has a hell of a story.

—

Ivan Johnson was born and raised Ivan Wilkerson—the surname is his father’s, though he was raised by his mother, Sandra Johnson—in a rough part of East San Antonio, where he quickly grew bigger than all of his peers. He began playing basketball not because he loved the game but because it was something to do, a reason to stay off the streets after school; he’d hit up the Eastside YMCA or the Eastside Boys & Club, slowly getting better and better as an oversized physical machine who just needed a little training. Ivan also played football, tight end on O and defensive end on D, but wasn’t very good—“I was fat and slow,” he says—and threw shot put, though that was really just something to do.

He became a star athlete in high school, putting up huge numbers for the hoops team, but was held back by an edgy temper that limited him both on and off the court. At Fox Tech, the downtown San Antonio high school he attended, he’d get into fights in the hallways and was constantly suspended for altercations with students and teachers alike. He’d let his frustrations loose on the basketball court—when he wasn’t held off the floor as a punishment for his in-school actions—where he was slapped with technical foul after technical foul. Sandra never attended games, unwilling to witness Ivan’s aggressive fits against the competition and the officials.

Ivan’s senior season (’01-02) was his best, during which he displayed visible signs of growth. “Ivan is the kind of kid who will try to get away with whatever he can,” Fox Tech coach Charles Cooper told the San Antonio Express-News at the time. “But he’s matured greatly since he was a freshman. As far as discipline and focus go, he’s really come a long way.”

Despite a 6-6, 230-pound body and stats that fell around 23 and 12, Ivan wasn’t presented with a scholarship to a top university—not that he expected one; his Fox Tech squad wasn’t very good (“We didn’t have the best athletes, so it was me playing against all the other star athletes,” he says) and his reputation as a bit of a hothead was well known amongst recruiters—and he went off to Cisco Junior College, a small two-year school smack in the middle of Texas. (The college’s men’s basketball program has since been shuttered.) He played nine games there but was “scholastically ineligible” to finish the season, according to a 2003 Express-News story.

Ivan spent the following year back in San Antonio. “I didn’t really like being away from home,” he says. But Cooper looked out for him, connecting the struggling big man with Mack Cleveland, an assistant coach at L.A. Southwest, a junior college in Los Angeles. Ivan left for southern California in the fall of ‘04.

He filled out to about 6-8, 270, and as a result was able to dominate the competition. Sometimes. “We never knew which Ivan was gonna show up,” says Reggie Morris Sr., Head Coach at Southwest. “Ivan’s a good guy, but it’s like Ivan can become two different people. Either he would perform at a high level, or Ivan would become more of a detriment. He would be overly aggressive, or play like he had a chip on a shoulder—he was angry for no particular reason.” The inevitable result: “He would say things, so he’d get technicals.”

(On a lighter note, after a trip home that year, Ivan returned with a gold grill covering his top teeth. In Texas, it was the thing to do; in Cali, not so much. “We really kidded him about that quite a bit,” Morris says. “He thought he was really stylin’ with his gold teeth, and it was like, Man, get that shit out of here.”)

In the South Coast Conference the team played in, two technicals in one game meant an ejection, but also a one-game suspension. He was tossed from a conference game early in the season, and then a subsequent one as a penalty, and Southwest lost both—Morris says they were never able to win the conference as a result. And then in the playoffs, an opposing player fell on Ivan after a basket—“Not even close to going for the ball,” Morris says—and Ivan pushed the guy off of him, which resulted in a suspension from the following tilt, which Southwest lost by 2. After the loss, Ivan, having watched the action from the sidelines, cried to his teammates, apologizing for letting them down.

Having already put in two years of school, Ivan’s time at Southwest was over. Then-University of Cincinnati Head Coach Bob Huggins had flown to California and successfully recruited Ivan, but that June the Bearcats coach was arrested for a DUI, leaving both his own and Ivan’s future with the Bearcats in limbo. Instead, Ivan met with Ernie Kent, then-Head Coach of the University of Oregon, who pitched a future in Eugene, where Ivan could instill some much-needed toughness into a finesse-minded U of O program.

In most respects, the Oregon experiment failed. Ivan lived with Billy McKnight, a former grad assistant who had stayed on campus (but wasn’t officially affiliated with the squad) and knew the ins and outs of the program as an ex-player and ex-assistant. McKnight often talked Ivan through issues he’d have with the program. “You’ve gotta understand, Eugene is a place where it’s 95 percent Caucasian,” McKnight says. “I think it was a very big adjustment for him to come up to Eugene and all of a sudden, the classes were a lot more difficult than before, and then, he had to fit in to a structure with the basketball team. I don’t think he had ever really had to do that before.”

Ivan was consistently in foul trouble, and was often benched for not understanding the technicalities of the Ducks’ game plan. The coaching staff wasn’t exactly sympathetic to his struggles. “We were impatient because we needed to move the program forward,” Kent admits. “He had such a volatile temper. That was his defense mechanism, survival skills kicking in. Maybe too much for us to handle, to that degree.”

“[Ivan] gets a bad rap if people don’t know how to deal with him,” says Morris, who stayed in touch with Ivan for years. “He did not like Ernie Kent—he made some comments to me about his frustration with Coach Kent.”

His behavior got him kicked off a road trip in early January, and though he exhibited flashes of potential—in a Pac-10 tournament game against Washington, “He backed down everybody,” Kent says. “He was a man amongst boys”—his athletic scholarship was not renewed at the end of the year. The final assessment was Kent’s: “It was a very, very difficult decision for me to make,” he says. “I felt in terms of me looking at my program and moving him along that he needed a change of environment.”

Jeff Oliver, Head Coach at the University of Southern California San Bernardino (a Div. II program), knew Mack Cleveland—who also continued his role as Ivan’s mentor well after the forward left Southwest—through a mutual friend and had been watching Ivan’s situation in Oregon unfold from afar. Oliver reached out to Cleveland to see where Ivan was headed after Oregon, and made it known that he’d love to bring the big man to USCSB.

Ivan had to take summer classes at U of O to get in good standing with the university to make himself eligible to transfer, and in doing so he physically let himself go, ballooning up to 300 pounds for the beginning of his fourth and final collegiate season. “He came down to me in bad shape,” Oliver says. “He wasn’t able to do the things he wanted to do right out of the gate. He was frustrated as a basketball player.”

The usual problems persisted during his first few months at USCSB—fighting with teammates, arguing with coaches, mouthing off to refs. Or worse. “My conversations with him were, you’re close enough, if you want to go play professional basketball, you need to start acting like a professional,” Oliver says. “Like, ‘OK, what you just did by flipping off the opposing team’s band: Do you think that is a professional act? Is that gonna help you achieve your dreams and aspirations of some day getting paid?’”

“[Ivan] seemed like he was on edge all the time,” says James Estrada, who played with Ivan at USCSB. “I just had the feeling he was like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any point.”

Things came to a boiling point that December, and Oliver went to Ivan with a simple proposal: My rules or you’re out. “I was the one coach who was able to say, you know what, you’re career is over with,” Oliver says. “I had that leverage. Every other place he kept being able to transfer, to say, ‘Screw you, I’ll just go to another place.’ But I was the last stop.”

His emotional outbursts (slightly) in check, Ivan’s collegiate career ended on a positive note. He led the team in scoring (15.5 ppg) and rebounding (4.7 rpg), guiding the group to a 26-6 record and an eventual one-point loss in the Final Four of the Div. II NCAA Tournament. After the tilt, in which he put up 19 points, 6 rebounds and 2 assists, Ivan once again apologized to a locker room of teammates for not helping them attain a trophy.

“When he changed his attitude, that’s when we got over the hump as a team,” Oliver says. “He was fun to be around, he really was. Kind of a prankster.”

But with a reputation that preceded any and all accomplishments, Ivan went undrafted in the 2007 NBA Draft. 2007 was also the year Ivan’s mother, Sandra Johnson, passed away. He made her last name his own (by then he was known as Ivan Johnson to most, and he’s still technically Wilkerson-Johnson, but he wanted to make sure his mother’s name was permanently attached to his), and despite an uncertain future, Ivan then declared that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—give up. “I promised my mom that I wouldn’t quit until I made it,” he says. “So I just kept it pushing.”

He took a shot at the D-League during ‘07-08, playing 10 games with the Anaheim Arsenal before a trade sent him to the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, where he finished the year. He averaged a decent 13.9 and 6.7, but not enough to entice an NBA franchise to call him up—the word that Ivan was a hothead had thoroughly sustained. “I ran through the D-League like it wasn’t nothing,” he says. “But they were still talking about [how] I couldn’t control my emotions.”

Ivan then went abroad, where there was more good money to be made. He played in South Korea for two seasons—in ’08-09 for the Changwon LG Sakers and then ’09-10 for the Jeonju KCC Egis. But he couldn’t stay out of trouble. In February of 2010 he was fined 4 million won (around $3,500) for flipping off an opposing player and provoking a fight; then in early April he was fined 6 million won for flipping off an opposing coach; and then after his team lost the last game of the championship series in mid-April, he flipped off a referee and was fined 5 million won and permanently banned from the Korea Basketball League, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

He resurfaced in Puerto Rico, his favorite place to have spent time playing pro ball to date. Why? “For the ladies,” he says. Ivan also lived a few steps from the beach, which certainly beat the brutal cold of a South Korea winter. Once the season living the good life—albeit one in which he made less money than he had in Asia—concluded, Ivan threw his name back in the D-League draft and was selected 15th by the Erie BayHawks.

Ivan played some of the best ball of his life in Erie, and yet, déjà vu: His numbers were great—22.6 ppg, 7.8 rpg—but he also led the league in technical fouls, and was tossed out of multiple games for picking up pairs of ‘em. “It still was a constant struggle for him to maintain his emotions,” says Jay Larranaga, Head Coach of the BayHawks. “But he was conscious of them, and it was something we talked about a lot.” Ivan was a fan favorite in Erie, with his face covering a pair of billboards and a trip to the D-League All-Star Game to show for it. But still, even while Ivan racked up 20 and 10s against the competition—including many NBA players down on assignment—not a single GM picked up the phone to give him a chance.

Larranaga’s father Jim is close with Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers, and as a favor Rivers rang Ivan to discuss what it takes to become an NBA player. “I think that had a good impact on Ivan,” the younger Larranaga says.

An opportunity to work out in an Atlanta Hawks mini-camp presented itself that June, and Ivan impressed, but days later the players and owners couldn’t work out their differences and the dreadful lockout went into effect. Not long thereafter, Ivan was given some exciting news—his first child, a baby boy, would be due in April of 2012.

With a child on the way and without a job in the States, Ivan took off for China, where he played for the Qingdao DoubleStar. He was one of two Americans on the squad, alongside Lester Hudson, a guard who would later find his way to the League. “I think people got it mixed up,” Hudson says of Ivan’s all-intense-everything reputation. “He’s a cool guy off the court.”

While in China that December, as a 27-year-old professional hooper who had never spent a single minute on an NBA team, Ivan Johnson finally got the call. Hawks coach Larry Drew had remembered Ivan’s passion during the mini-camp, and brought him back for veteran’s camp—and even offered a small, non-guaranteed contract to the forward to start the 2011-12 season. “He basically picked up where he left off [in June],” Drew says. “So I thought he deserved to get a legitimate shot.” Yes: Ivan would be a 27-year-old dealing with rookie duties from “veterans” years younger than him. Didn’t matter.

Motivated by the desire to support his soon-to-be-born son, he took full advantage of that shot, and between starting center Al Horford’s regular season-ending shoulder injury and that breakout game against the Miami Heat—which many of the people interviewed for this piece said they watched, jumping up and down on their couches and cheering excitedly into their televisions—Ivan’s role on the team was set. His $473,604 contract was officially guaranteed for the ’11-12 season on February 10.

“It was like, the hard work paid off,” Ivan says. “Dreams came true.”

His nuances continued to interest fans, be it the result of his diamond-encrusted teeth or his claim that he doesn’t watch hoops and as a result has no idea who any of his opponents are. (“That’s how I’ve always been,” he says. “I usually watch cartoons. Cartoons and COPS.”) But once those initial TNT-sponsored 15 minutes of fame were up, Ivan continued to succeed sans any limelight. He came off the bench as a reserve for the Hawks all season, bringing solid energy and modest stats of 6.4 points and 4.0 rebounds per game (numbers bogged down by his 13 minutes-per-game average; his per-36 minute averages were 13.7 and 8.7), while mostly limiting his technical fouls and emotional outbursts. He also took some time off in mid-March to witness the birth of his first-born, Ivan Jr., and returned to the team days later.

The season was far from perfect, though. Ivan was sent home from a road trip in mid-April for an occurrence that Drew referred to as an “isolated incident.” Then in the Playoffs, when Horford eventually returned, Ivan’s playing time dwindled—on the night the Hawks were eliminated, he didn’t see a single second on the court, and then he gave a Celtics fan the middle finger after the loss.

But in a league where several teams are without a decent enforcer, a guy who can bring some aggression and energy when the pace drops in the middle quarters, there should be at least a few NBA front offices that’ll bounce Ivan’s name around when considering how to dole out some dollars this summer. On July 1 he’ll officially be a restricted free agent, and the AJC reports the Hawks will extend him a qualifying offer, so they’ll maintain the right to match any contract he signs.

“I’d rather have him that juiced up and have to tone him down than the other way around,” Drew says. “He has a motor that most NBA coaches love.”

—

Back in the visitor’s locker room at MSG earlier this season, minutes before Ivan retraces a few parts of his complicated journey—a journey that begins in East San Antonio and ends, for the moment, with a role on an NBA team, a child on the way and a warm grin on its narrator’s face—he’s sitting courtside, his arms draped over the adjacent folding chairs as he takes in the bubbling pre-game atmosphere.

The power forward’s focus drifts in the same direction as the rest of the building’s—down to the Knicks’ basket, where Jeremy Lin has just walked onto the court and is practicing flat-footed jumpers with an assistant coach. Cameramen fill the sidelines, clicking away, while fans stand in front of their seats and watch the most Googled human being on the planet in absolute amazement. On this winter night, Linsanity is in full force, as the point guard’s out-of-nowhere rise and unlikely journey have stolen the attention of the basketball world—and, for that matter, the entire world.

Not Johnson’s. For a minute he gazes from afar, his dark eyes wide and curious, but his mind seems to wander elsewhere quickly. He then stands up, stretches his shoulders, and plods down the tunnel straight into the locker room. It’s a game night in the NBA, and Ivan Johnson has a job to do.

Not one… not two… not three… LeBron finally pulled off the first part of that infamous boast and we’re here to recap it all with Editor-at-Large Lang Whitaker, then we get the inside scoop on Anthony Davis and the upcoming Draft from contributor Maurice Bobb. Finally, Myles Brown lets us know his thoughts on the Finals, the OKC Thunder and what to expect this coming offseason.

Sometimes, you have to swing for the fences. About a month ago, when thinking of story ideas for SLAM, I sent Ben a very simple email asking if he’d thought about featuring Anthony Davis? Of course, I thought a story on college basketball’s latest clear-cut future franchise player was already in the works. As it turned out, they were trying to land the shot-blocking sensation for the cover, but there were roadblocks to getting it done since he had no agent at the time (and still doesn’t—making him the last big-time prospect in this year’s Draft not to). I replied that I had a way to get in touch with Davis, and right away, I got a phone call from Mr. Osborne:

“You sure know how to get me to call you, don’t you?”

“Yes, Ben, I do”

From there, it was all about taking unorthodox channels to get to what would turn out to be one of our most coveted cover story subjects to date. At one point, I was to hear from Davis’ parents. After a long, worry-filled week of no response from the ‘rents, Ben and I began to get a tad bit nervous. The closing of the magazine was near and still, we didn’t have our cover subject locked in.

On about the last day we could set something up for this issue, I got a phone call from an unknown number. The area code was 312. Chicago. I snatched up the phone like it was a field mouse and I was a hawk swooping in for the kill. And wouldn’t you know it? It was Anthony himself, being gracious and understanding in helping us meet our deadline.

Now you have to understand, Davis is only 19, so when you’re betting everything on a 19-year-old’s word, without the benefit of an agent or handler, things can go off the rails in a flash because, to a man that age, things happen and they invariably do happen.

But like a smooth tactician on a hot streak in Vegas, we rolled the dice. I flew into Lexington the night before the scheduled shoot to get everything ready and woke up early to make the donuts.

As a writer who has covered sports and hip-hop extensively, I can tell you that celebrities are notoriously late to just about everything, especially photo shoots and interviews. In this game, there’s a whole lot of “hurry up and wait” before you wrap a shoot or interview. That’s just the way it is. But right as the clock struck 9:30 a.m., which was our call time, in comes Ant. And this was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend to boot!

As our esteemed photographer Trevor Paulhus worked his magic, I observed Anthony. The thing that stood out to me was how humble he was. Here’s a kid who basically wore a Superman cape throughout the NCAA Tournament and actually saved Lois Lane and was a lock to go No. 1 in the 2012 NBA Draft and to look at him, you’d think he was just another kid on a college campus getting ready for the holiday weekend. And, there was no entourage. Just his buddy Will, who made sure Ant stayed on time for his flight to Oakland that afternoon.

Going into it, I knew all about Davis’ game-changing defense, fleet-footed athleticism and unshakeable poise, but that day, I saw something I hadn’t seen in a kid of his stature in a long time: appreciation. This kid really appreciates where he is in life. He appreciates the fact that he is on the cusp of his lifelong dream to be in the NBA. And after speaking to him and knowing what drives him, I understood why he never lost his cool when other teams tried to rattle him with hard fouls and other cheap tactics. I understood why, in the championship game, when he couldn’t buy a bucket, he locked in on defense, Windex’d the boards and secured Coach Cal’s first-ever National Championship. I understood this kid and I liked him. So much so, that when he dons a New Orleans Hornets uni next year, I’ll be cheering for him like a real Hornets fan with a beignet in one hand and a po’ boy in the other.

For my cover story on Davis, I just tried to keep it simple. I wanted to humanize him. Too often, reports on college kids are static and filled with stats or feats of strength on the parquet floor. What I wanted to do was delve into what makes this kid tick; what drives him; what it was like to sprout from 6-2 to 6-10 practically overnight and go from barely being on the radar to being the radar. With Anthony’s considerable help in the form of great answers to my questions, all that and more is in the ish.

Ed’s Note: Thanks for the perfect lead-in, Maurice. This was indeed a stressful but thrilling cover to pull off. And for all the people who asked after the first post how we did this shoot five days before the Lottery took place: We shot Anthony in gear from every single team in the Lottery. That, plus shooting him in Kentucky gear, took a good three hours, and as Maurice says, we are very grateful to Anthony for his time. All that said, an issue of SLAM is always much more than just a dope cover. What else is in this one? A feature on Kevin Garnett by the increasingly high-profile Lang Whitaker, an amazing Old School q+a with Tommy Heinsohn, a revealing piece on DeMarcus Cousins and all sorts of stuff to get you hyped for the summer season, including an extensive and photo-driven piece on the new film, Doin’ It In The Park. Start checking for the issue in New York today and in the rest of the country next week.—Ben Osborne

Our tradition of not unveiling our new covers until they are actually on newsstands is not likely to change much in the future, but the SLAM 160 cover is just too special to keep under wraps.

We’ll explain a little more about how we’ve already shot Anthony in a Hornets jersey in print and on the site when this ish drops for real in about 12 days, but for now just enjoy a dope, timely image of one of the most exciting players to enter the NBA in a long time.